oh honey

your apology for “how hard things have been” for me was like you handing me a long-stemmed rose and then ripping it from my clenched fist to tear at my skin. your wishing me the best was like dangling nostalgia in front of my face while simultaneously setting it on fire. your name-dropping your girlfriend was like backhanding me across the face with her name printed in sharpie on your palm. you contacting me at all was like you picking at the scab that you are on my body. if you’re trying to draw blood I can tell you it isn’t very hard. just whisper remnants of our past and boy do you have me covered with red.

reading words you had taken time to type out to me had my body wheezing and puffing. I wanted to blow my whole life down. sticks and hay weren’t enough when it came to rebuilding my walls after you left. hard dark bricks hardly did the trick. you can’t just send me a limp little paragraph after a year of silence and have the audacity to be upset with me. I stayed in my lane. I made myself block you on things. I forged the effort to stop looking at your instagram back when we were still talking. I planted new trees where you’d ripped others out at the roots. I put band-aids over stab wounds I’d given myself. you pushed me in a ravine and let the current take me away. I fought and fought and fought every day to gain back who I was outside of you.

apologies aren’t necessary. neither is your clear indignant thought that you have the upper hand. that somehow you’ve won. I don’t recall a race to the finish line but I can assure you we both have yet to reach it. pride isn’t the right word when I relay how much I have grown past you. the right word would be fulfillment. the holes that were dug and abandoned have now been topped to the brim with petals and water. I don’t need your “you can call me an asshole” when we aren’t the same people. who are you? who am I? I don’t know. you don’t know. I can move past what you had done before but I can’t hold you accountable when that may not be who you are anymore. just like you can’t act like I’m still falling over my feet every day at the mere idea of seeing your name light up my phone. you’ve progressed and moved on. give me that same respect. for I have done the same. then I’ll pick the thorns out of my skin and return them to you. they aren’t mine anymore.